The problem with luck

A letter about the terrible and the miraculous

I know that this is a newsletter about loneliness—not a newsletter about fertility and procreation, though I’ve written a bit about my experience with infertility here and elsewhere. I’d planned to publish a letter about the loneliness of the meritocracy today, and maybe I will still publish that letter at some point. But this letter is about grief and luck, which is, I hope, another way to get at some questions about how alone (or not) each of us really is in this life. 

Back in December, Mark and I did a second round of IVF. Our doctors told us that it seemed like things just weren’t going to work for us—not with my eggs and his sperm anyway. They recommended using donor embryos or donor sperm and we sat with those options for a while, trying to decide what having a baby could look like for us. We found ourselves in a kind of limbo, dreading the possibility of going back into treatment but not quite ready to give up. I was unsure about the ethical complexities of adoption and we were told that, at 39 and 44, we were likely too old anyway. No path forward seemed accessible or obvious so we waited to see if something would start to make sense. Part of what made it so hard was not being able to have casual conversations with friends and acquaintances. This seemed to me like the kind of problem where the experiences and input of others might actually provide a useful kind of friction, some grist for the looping mill of my thoughts. But it’s hard to have casual conversations about childbearing in the best of times, much less in lockdown. 

Instead, I went to see my sister and meet my new baby niece who was hardly a new baby any more at seven months. I told almost no one I was leaving the country. At the time, Canadian politicians were being publicly shamed for taking tropical vacations while telling their constituents to stay at home and not spread the virus. And I didn’t want my very careful, very desperate attempt at joy to be crushed by judgment (which I may or may not have deserved). My sadness about infertility seemed to be ricocheting off all the other sadnesses of winter: the Capitol riots, the pandemic’s cresting second wave, the loss of a student to suicide. But the baby, with her easy smile and her hair that smelled of milk and soap, was a perfect reprieve. 

Leaving my sister at the airport was the second saddest experience of the year. Quarantining at home for two weeks in the darkest part of February was probably the third. But I emerged from quarantine feeling gratitude for daylight and dog walks and the tiniest omens of spring. I was already planning my next trip—but not just a visit, a whole future in which I would spend weeks or even months on the other side of the continent, being an aunt, writing, seeing the friends and family I’ve been separated from for months now. 

Then a series of totally improbable things happened that upended everything. First, I got what seemed like a sinus infection. My head hurt, my ears ached, my nose was perpetually stuffy. I was tired all the time. The clinic said to come in, but not before getting a Covid test. It seemed impossible that I could be sick with Covid after two weeks in quarantine, but I did as instructed. When I got a call the next day with my negative Covid results, I relented and finally did the other test I’d been putting off: a pregnancy test. For days I’d blamed my late period on travel and weird hormones. I’d told Mark that even though I knew that technically it was possible, I refused to take a test because I did not believe in miracles. But a second line appeared almost instantly: it was positive. That was why I’d been feeling so bad.

My doctor warned us that at my age the chance of miscarriage was about one in three. These were terrifying odds—and it seemed incredibly likely that something could go wrong given our history. But it felt so good to not be sad for one day. And then again for the next day and the one after. We reasoned that, despite the risk, it might be nice to let ourselves lean in to this unexpected sense of possibility.

At my first ultrasound, my muscles shook with nerves as she slid the probe across my abdomen. I had prepared for bad news. “Do you want me to tell you what I’m seeing?” the tech asked. “Or would you rather I wait until your partner is on the phone?” Mark was in the car, not allowed to come in, but I had promised to FaceTime him if I could. I considered the possibility of her breaking bad news to us while he was on the phone and decided I’d rather just know right away and tell him myself. 

“Just go ahead and tell me,” I said. 

“Well, you’re having twins.”

I think the first thing I said was, “You’re kidding,” because I was sure—for a long moment—that it had to be a joke. Ah the infamous ultrasound technician humor! Of course that would actually be a terrible joke and she would probably lose her job for making it, but for a split second twins seemed too outlandish to be possible.

Once I realized that there were in fact two babies in there, my first thought was that I would never have time to write again. My second was that we would have to move. And my third was that Mark would be so happy.

We used to joke about having twins. I’d always been clear that I only ever wanted one baby. It seemed like the only way to be both a mother and a writer. Whenever I explained this, Mark would reply and say it was fine, we could have twins instead. 

“There are two babies in there,” I told him over video call and I took a screenshot of his face. The tech printed a full 8.5” x 11” picture with two tiny blobs on it, one labeled Baby A and the other Baby B. We stuck it on the fridge. 

In the next few weeks, we listed our condo, searched for a new home, and started an apology campaign to the dog, whose life we were about to ruin in a matter of months. I went to a flurry of doctor appointments. Through it all I felt pretty miserable, nauseous and exhausted with strange new aches arriving every few days. “I’m trying not to complain about the most miraculous thing that’s ever happened to me,” I said to Mark, “but being pregnant kind of sucks.” 

My hopes for summer travel vanished quickly. Because the twins were identical and sharing the same placenta, we were declared a high risk pregnancy. I’d have ultrasounds every two weeks and doctor’s visits once a month. As long as the two-week quarantine was in place, going to see my family was out of the question. But for all the loss I felt at not seeing my parents, for all the aches and the nausea, there was still the singular, impossible fact that any of this had happened at all. Every day it struck me anew: despite everything we were going to be parents. It felt good to to give up on trying to be in charge of this process and just accept that we were never in control in the first place. 

Then, at yesterday’s ultrasound, we learned that the babies were showing signs of twin-twin transfusion syndrome—what is generally considered a worst case scenario for identical twins at this point in a pregnancy (eighteen weeks). So tomorrow I’m having surgery in hopes of helping one or both babies make it to term. The procedure is relatively low risk for me, but high risk for the babies. If we do nothing we’ll almost certainly lose the pregnancy. 

I’ve often felt like I’ve gotten more than my share of good luck in this life. Even if things go terribly I’ll probably still feel like this is true. But I keep getting caught on the question of how so many improbable things could happen in such a short period of time. I keep watching the future change, and change, and change again. I feel like a walking version of the parable of the Zen farmer. Good luck, bad luck: who knows?

The chance of us conceiving after years of infertility is impossible to calculate, but it certainly seemed unlikely at best. The chance of having identical twins is about one in 250. The chance of having TTTS is also low; it happens in something like 5-15% of identical twin pregnancies. How does one end up on the small side of so many statistics? Does this make us lucky or unlucky? Is this a miracle or a tragedy? I know the answer is “yes, and…” but I don’t know what comes after the and. 

I often tell my students that it’s hard to write about things while you’re too close to the events of the story. It’s hard to untangle and make meaning of life as we’re living it. And yet, writing about this today seemed better than any of the other things I could be doing while I wait. To be honest, it felt like the only thing I could do. 

This certainly feels like an unlucky turn of events. And yet some of the luckiest things I’ve experienced (like having an article go viral which basically changed my whole career) have also been the loneliest. I’ve had to push myself to reach out to our little community of friends to let them know what’s going on. I know, intellectually, that they genuinely want to know. And yet, it’s so hard to deliver bad news, even when that news is yours. In the few hours since we started telling friends, we’ve received offers for dinner delivery, an UberEats gift card, and a one-month subscription to HBO! I’ve gotten four offers from people who wanted to fly across the content to be here even though there’s nothing much they can do (especially from quarantine), and countless offers of dog walks. Letting people take care of you, trusting that they mean it when they ask how they can help: this is a lesson I keep learning. A lesson we’re likely to learn again and again in the months ahead. 

I keep wondering: is there an equation for how much care balances out grief? Or how much grief it takes to temper joy? Can anyone lean into a sense of possibility without touching the potential loss that abides at its core? 

Despite all this care, the fact remains that all of this possibility and all of this potential loss lives within my body. In that way, it is mine alone. Throughout this pregnancy, I have struggled to trust that my body can do this. After all those years of fertility treatments, it’s easy to feel like there is something fundamentally unmaternal about me. To worry that I am not cut out for whatever lies ahead. I’ve been reluctant to make an announcement about the pregnancy at all—because how do you appropriately share the fact that the most miraculous and terrifying thing that has ever happened is happening right now inside your own body?

A few weeks ago Mark and I went to a very fancy baby store to buy a pregnancy pillow. Everything in the store was absurdly expensive and stylish. I thought I might buy a gift for my niece, but would she really use a $75 pair of baby-sized designer sneakers, considering she can’t even walk yet? We did find a set of wooden blocks with the Polish alphabet, numbers, and animals carved into each side. Mark is Polish and we’d been planning to go to Poland with his parents before the pandemic hit last year. I’ve been practicing Polish on Duolingo ever since, and I became obsessed with these blocks and the idea of teaching my children to say kaczka for duck, lew for lion. 

Yesterday, between our first and second appointments at the hospital, a package from the very fancy baby store arrived in the mail, sent from two faraway friends. I cried when I realized what was inside. But last night we pulled them out anyway, going block by block, practicing the words for frog and cat and fox and whale. 

I don’t know when I’ll be ready or able to write about whatever comes next. I can barely talk to anyone about what’s happening, but I can type about it. There is not much meaning to make from this experience right now, except to observe that whatever narratives we attach to good luck or bad aren’t especially durable. There is only the fact that saying things plainly can set order to chaos for a moment. So thanks for letting me do that.

Yours,

Mandy